The greatest challenge facing longer-term adoption of cloud
computing services is not security, but rather cloud
interoperability and data portability, say cloud computing experts
from IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional
association. At the same time, IEEE’s experts say cloud
providers could reassure customers by improving the tools they
offer enterprise customers to give them more control over their own
data and applications while offering a security guarantee.
Today, many public cloud networks are configured as closed
systems and are not designed to interact with each other. The lack
of integration between these networks makes it difficult for
organizations to consolidate their IT systems in the cloud and
realize productivity gains and cost savings. To overcome this
challenge, industry standards must be developed to help cloud
service providers design interoperable platforms and enable data
portability.
“Security is certainly a very important
consideration, but it’s not what will inhibit further
adoption,” said Dr Alexander Pasik, CIO at IEEE and an early
advocate of cloud computing as an analyst at Gartner in the 1990s.
“To achieve the economies of scale that will make cloud
computing successful, common platforms are needed to ensure users
can easily navigate between services and applications regardless of
where they’re coming from, and enable organizations to more
cost-effectively transition their IT systems to a services-oriented
model.”
According to industry research firm IDC, revenue from public
cloud computing services is expected to reach USD 55.5 billion by
2014, up from USD 16 billion in 2009. Cloud computing plays an
important role in people’s professional and personal lives by
supporting a variety of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications
used to store healthcare records, critical business documents,
music and e-book purchases, social media content, and more.
However, lack of interoperability still presents challenges for
organizations interested in consolidating a host of enterprise IT
systems on the cloud.
According to IEEE Fellow Elisa Bertino, professor of Computer
Science at Purdue University and research director at the Center
for Education and Research in Information Assurance, the
interoperability issue is more pressing than perceived data
security concerns. “Security in the cloud is no different
than security issues that impact on-premises networks.
Organizations are not exposing themselves to greater security risks
by moving data to the cloud. In fact, an organization’s data
is likely to be more secure in the cloud because the vendor is a
technology specialist whose business model is built on data
protection.”
However, Steve O’Donnell, IEEE Member and former global
head of Data Centres at BT in the United Kingdom, suggested much of
the concern is about control for IT managers. “There’s
a lack of enterprise tools that enable management of security and
availability in the cloud in the same way as in a data
center,” he said. “Enterprises believe their own data
centers are secure and available, and want to own the management of
cloud security and availability rather than outsourcing it to a
third party.”
Dr Pasik, an IEEE Senior Member, suggests one creative solution
to reassure organizations their data is secure on the cloud is to
develop an insurance-based approach, similar to the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the U.S. “The vast majority
of Americans have bank accounts because they know their money is
safe,” said Pasik. “I see a similar type of guarantee,
supported by private industry, being offered to users of cloud
computing within the next 10 years.”
As more organizations migrate IT services and systems to the cloud
as a result of improved interoperability and portability, the
market will reach an economic tipping point. On average, it might
cost an organization about USD 500 per user to manage an enterprise
e-mail system in-house, said Pasik. “Compare that to the cost
of running a cloud based enterprise e-mail service, which might be
around USD 50 per user. That’s a ten-fold economic impact
that makes a strong business case for cloud technology. And
it’s removing a system from your network that isn’t
directly tied to most organizations’ core competencies, so
why commit resources to supporting it internally?”
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